White Privilege and the Complications of Class


Recently I attended a workshop on race put on by the Rochester chapter of the National Coalition Building Institute. A wonderful conversation resulted, and those in attendance expressed the desire to meet again, as we felt the two hours we spent together was just an "appetizer," leaving us wanting more. Our discussions prompted me to go back through old writing of mine, much of which is on the web in various locations. Today I am calling attention to a WMST-L listserv discussion, (September 2001) and one of my posts, in response to an article by Peggy McIntosh, called "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." I am posting a slightly revised version of that here.


Excerpted from McIntosh's article:

>2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area that I can afford and in which I would want to live.

3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me. <

This piece is well worth reading, but I want to make one little quibble.

While I can identify in all the other items McIntosh lists regarding white privilege, these two do not apply to me as a white person on a tiny, fixed income. They most definitely don't apply to other whites on limited incomes, either.

McIntosh does briefly state much later in the piece "In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation." Terrific--but there's no mention of the disadvantages of having a low income, or being in poverty, which can, in some situations, overwhelm the advantages of race.

Of course, higher income does not necessarily confer the privilege of living comfortably where one wants to live -- if one is not white (or, in some cases, not Protestant or Christian, or heterosexual, etc.), and I'm sure that's the point McIntosh was trying to make. But I am troubled by the lack of acknowledgement that the privilege of living where one wants to is NOT conferred on ALL whites, nor even all middle class whites. (I am using "middle class" here as a cultural designation. Although I am currently living well below the poverty line, I am "middle class" by virtue of my education, the cultural repetoire provided by my parents, and having had, at one point in my life, a middle class income and upward mobility.)

I currently live in a very bad neighborhood. Almost every night, I observe drug deals going down on the street from my bedroom window. (The police will do nothing.) I have watched (after calling 911) a woman being beaten over the head with a hammer and shoved out into the street in front of oncoming cars, which, fortunately, swerved around her. I have also observed street fights with large numbers of men.

The area is about 90% black--a fact that I don't mind, per se, having moved into this apartment after losing ownership of a home in a predominantly black, middle class neighborhood, which I loved and of which I was proud. However, my current neighborhood is an extremely high crime rate area and it is very difficult to know whom to trust. (My middle class black friends tell me they wouldn't trust anyone in my neighborhood, either.)

My car, which I have to park on the street, has been vandalized three times, leaving it pockmarked with dents, bumps and deep scratches. I don't even bother getting it fixed because it will most likely happen again. I don't know for sure why this keeps happening, but I do know that my black neighbors' cars are not bothered. It is of frequent concern to me that I might be targeted because I am white. Fortunately, I have never been personally accosted.

As a racial minority in THIS neighborhood, I am constantly aware of my race and concerned about how my actions might be interpreted by virtue of my race. I am also aware of ways in which our racist culture is still deeply embedded in my psyche. I feel that my survival in this neighborhood depends on not offending my neighbors--something I would never do consciously but could end up doing unconsciously, so I am constantly policing my reactions to everything.

I do not in anyway believe my suffering in these circumstances is the equivalent of growing up and living black in a white world, nor do I think of this as a problem of "reverse racism." Whatever prejudice there might be against me as a white person in this neighborhood would not exist if Anglo-European culture had never been racist in the first place. I know I have many privileges that my neighbors do not have, including the fact that it is unlikely I will be unfairly treated by the police or automatically suspected of being a criminal (though they HAVE perceived me as something of a nut, as my presence and willingness to be a witness is totally out of character with their expectations). I know that once I leave the neighborhood, so long as I dress well out of my dwindling professional wardrobe and no one making decisions about me sees my beat-up car, I will re-enter the world of middle class white privilege -- at least, on the surface.

Nonetheless, I do NOT have the privilege of simply picking up and moving to a nicer neighborhood, regardless of my white face and my PhD. And this gives me great pain and a sense of powerlessness. There are plenty of other people out there who are in similar circumstances. I can see how working-class and poverty-class whites might have great difficulty seeing themselves as privileged by their whiteness, especially when having to endure the humiliation of applying for social services. I am sure it is probably even worse for black applicants, who bear the burden of racist assumptions about welfare, but it's the difference between horrible and more horrible.

White academics (except for those rare few whose working class roots are still very present in their lives) tend to be as deeply unconscious of their class privilege as they are of their white privilege.

***
An update:

When I first moved into my current residence after being evicted from my home of 7 years on the other side of town, I experienced some pretty intense bigotry. I am one of about four or five white people living within a several block radius. Children and teens treated me badly, attempting to antagonize me. Adults walked by and spit on my property. My windows were broken twice during the first two weeks after I moved here. I had "white bitch" screamed at me more times than I care to count. At one point I was ready to go out to the people walking by and ask them if the next thing they were planning was to burn a cross on my lawn.

Instead, I quietly dug in, and treated everyone with dignity and respect no matter how badly they had treated me. It's been a while since I've been called names, and some have come to be my friends. Someday I hope most (if not all) in the neighborhood will come to see me for who I am: a person who cares deeply about all human beings.

Posted: Sat - February 17, 2007 at 01:40 PM          

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